Lois Bujold: Captain Vorpatril's alliance

Ivan peered around the dim living room. He was not, he assured himself, tied up in a small, dark place. It was a spacious, dark place, and not pitch-dark in any case, given the ambient urban glow from the window. And on the third floor, well aboveground. He sighed, and remembered to keep wriggling his weary feet. The nasty plastic ropes securing his ankles to the chair legs did seem to be slowly stretching. Perhaps he should have tried harder to escape, earlier. But the two women had been taking him right where he’d wanted to go, inside, for just the purpose he’d come, to talk. True, he’d been envisioning friendly chat , not hostile interrogation , but what was that quote Miles was so fond of? Never interrupt your enemy while he is making a mistake. Not that they were enemies, necessarily. He hoped. By could have stood to be clearer on that point, in retrospect.

The next most likely suspect on the body modification front was, of course, the planet and system of Jackson’s Whole, an almost equally unsavory hypothesis supported, alas, by any number of small hints the two women had let fall.

Jackson’s Whole did not have a unified planetary government—in fact, it claimed to have no government at all. Instead, it was ruled by a patchwork of Great Houses—116 of ’em the last Ivan had heard, but the number shifted in their internecine competitions—and countless Houses Minor. They tended not to hold large, unified territories on the planet’s surface, but rather, interpenetrated more like competing companies. Granted, the system, or lack of it, did make it less likely for the Jacksonians to pull together for, say, a major military invasion of their neighbors. But a person who had no House allegiance or employment there was a very unprotected person indeed.

Ivan had no trouble imagining all sorts of colorful reasons for the two young women to be on the run from the Whole. Any sensible persons not aligned with the power structure—structures—would be better off emigrating, if they could manage it. The real mystery was why anyone from there would be chasing them. Assassination wasn’t that casual a business expense, not with interstellar distances in play. If the two had made it all the way to Komarr but were still this afraid, someone with resources must really care, and not in a good way.

The room was not growing smaller. Nor darker. Nor damper. Nor changing in any way. But dear God this chair was getting hard. He hitched his shoulders and wriggled his butt, recalling all those dire warnings about deep-vein thrombosis and long rides in shuttle seats. As if he didn’t have enough paranoia running through his aching head right now. Though his legs had stopped with the post-stun pins-and-needles, and were down to just pins.

So how had the two women fallen in together, and what was their relationship, really? Was the blue woman friend, business partner, servant, lover, or bodyguard to the other? Some combination, or something even more arcane? When, inevitably, he’d had to pee, Rish had taken the con in the argument over whether it was safe to let him up. Ivan’s plaintive, How long do I have to spend not attacking you to prove I’m not attacking you? had moved the warmer Nanja, but not the gold-eyed other. In the end, Nanja had left the room, and Rish had held a plastic jug.

Decanting his bladder was too much of a relief by then for Ivan to be embarrassed, much. Rish’s strange beauty did not diminish close up, it just grew ever more detailed, almost fractal, but he’d stayed shriveled in her hand nonetheless, too alarmed to be aroused by her cool touch. She’d been as impersonal and efficient as a trained medtech. Which was undoubtedly just as well. Ivan couldn’t vouch for how things would have gone had the task fallen to her partner.

So had undertaking the chore indicated anything except the price of winning the argument, or that Rish was protectively older, or what? Maybe the two women were escaped slaves. They could ask for asylum—slavery was entirely illegal in the Imperium, even more disapproved than gaudy gengineering upon humans, despite the inevitable legal brangling about where mere unfavorable indentures left off and the real thing began. If Rish was a created slave, she might be valuable enough to pursue. Hell, maybe Nanja had stolen her, now there was a thought. That’d tick someone off…

For a planet with a mere nineteen-and-something-hour sidereal day, this was turning into a damned long night. Ivan eyed his out-of-reach wristcom and tried to estimate the time left till dawn, and his non-arrival at work. His credit chit, used at the shipping shop, would surely give ImpSec a Last Known Location. Nanja’s co-clerk would come under questioning about as soon as the investigating officer could scramble there, and probably wouldn’t even need fast-penta to identify Ivan. ImpSec—not Service Security, for reasons Ivan had not yet confided to his quarry—would probably be knocking on the door before the two women had finished arguing over whether to feed their famished prisoner any breakfast. Pleasant, well-upholstered Nanja, Ivan imagined, would take his side…

His breath stopped at a faint scratching noise from the living room window. The flat was three floors up; there was no wind within a dome to move, say, tree branches against the polarizing glass, even assuming there were any trees on that side of the building. He hadn’t had a chance to look. He opened his mouth again, exhaling as quietly as possible. Well—he scraped for optimism—maybe ImpSec hadn’t waited for morning…? And if you believe that, I have a cousin who will sell you the Star Bridge in Vorbarr Sultana…

A hiss, a faint glow, as a narrow plasma beam cut a large hole in the window. Ivan thought he could see two dark shapes briefly limned in the dark beyond. Three floors up? They had to be riding some kind of float pallet, out there above the alley. The panel of normally unbreakable glass was eased back soundlessly out of the way.

Ivan had quite expected ImpSec to come collect him, yet another reason not to exert himself unduly in pointless escape attempts. But not at this hour, and not by that route. It seemed Nanja’s paranoia was more urgently justified than he’d thought.

Ivan became uncomfortably aware that he was still tied to the bloody chair. Even if he could, by some heroic effort, rip his feet out of their restraints (shedding his shoes in the process), his wrists would remain bound to the chair arms. The most he’d be able to manage would be a sort of barefoot, crouching waddle toward his probably-armed foes. Maybe he could swing around and hit them in the shins with the chair legs…? Ivan had no desire to be stunned twice in one day, even optimistically assuming they bore stunners and not some more lethal weapons.

Ivan sank back and waited till both dark shapes had oozed through the gap and stood up, before calling out in a carrying voice: “If you’re after those two women, I gotta tell you, you’re hours too late. They packed their bags and flew ages ago.”

A low-voiced huff from the dark that might have been, What the hell…? A faint double gleam from night goggles as two startled heads turned toward him.

“You may as well turn on the lights,” Ivan continued, loudly. “You could stand to untie me, too.” He bounced in place and thumped his chair legs, as if for emphasis.

The shapes trod forward. One reached to shove up his goggles and hit the light pad on the wall; the other yelped, “Ow!”, clapped his hands over his eyes, and hastily dragged down his own light-amplifying eyewear. Cheap civilian models, Ivan observed, wincing against the sudden glare, not that anything more exotic would be required for this sort of sortie.